Some have heard that long-form blog posts are better for search engine optimization (SEO), while others tout short-form blog posts. Most experts[1] agree that long-form content is better for SEO, though at least one major SEO company calls it BS. Long blog posts contain over 1,000 words and in-depth information about the subject. It falls right into Google's sweet spot of providing content that shows a business has experience and expertise and is authoritative and trustworthy, so we tend to side with using long-form blog posts to attract people and to make search engines happy.
Longer content also gives the reader the information he or she is looking for. We found nothing more maddening than searching for information and coming across a website or blog post that barely touches the subject.
The Purpose of Blogs
First and foremost, blog posts give people information about your company's products and services they need. Secondly, blog posts help make your site more visible by giving the search engines content to index and list. Blogs also give you plenty of opportunity to use keywords – as long as you don't overstuff.
Search engine ranking moves your site to the top of the search listings. While long-form content that shows your expertise and trustworthiness is a large part of search engine ranking, backlinks are just as important, if not more so. Well-written and researched content is also a must if you want to make the search engine gods happy.
Long-Form Content
Most define long-form content as having 1,000 or more words. At EpochWriter, we consider anything over 1,800 words long-form. Each long blog post should cover the topic in-depth and include sub-topics. We found that long blog posts are better for blogs, while short blog posts are better for website pages.
Once a searcher finds what they are looking for, they want in-depth content that answers all their questions – not information that leaves them with more questions than before landing on your site. Short pieces of content do not accomplish that.
Short-Form Content
Shorter content is better for inbound marketing – content usually found on web pages. It is usually 500 words or less and gets right to the point. Think of it as an outline for your products or services. Google and other search engines also look at short-form content that contains keywords so they can index your site.
If you have a large site that provides many services or products, you may want to skip the short stuff and opt for something longer, so you have plenty of opportunity to include internal links.
The bad thing about short content is that it is less likely to attract backlinks. The backside of this is that people don't want to take more than a few minutes to determine if a website is what they are looking for. They tend to scan headlines. If they don't immediately see what they are looking for, they move on to the next website.
Blog Posts and Search Engines
Google likes to see content that shows you have the expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) in your field. Your clients / customers also want to see this. If search engines crawl your site and it doesn't meet Google's Best Key Practices, the bots won't index it, which means it won't be visible to searchers.
Your content should be written for people first and should be helpful and reliable. It should specify keywords – words that people search for when they are looking for services or products like yours.
For example, a bankruptcy lawyer might have the following keywords:
- Bankruptcy
- Chapter 7 bankruptcy
- Chapter 11 bankruptcy
- Chapter 13 bankruptcy
- Get out of debt
- Stop collections
- Stop a foreclosure auction
Those are just some of the keywords a bankruptcy lawyer should use. You should also include long-tail keywords such as "hire a bankruptcy lawyer," "bankruptcy lawyer near me," "Chapter 7 bankruptcy attorney," and so on.
Content strategists research the best keywords for your products and services and create content around the keywords. However, gone are the days when you had to force keywords into content, which made it sound awkward. Now we really have to work to make those keywords sound natural since one of Google's Best Key Practices is to write "people first" content.
Google also has other requirements, including making links crawlable –including internal links to help search engines find other pages, mentioning your site in online communities, and following best practices for including images and video.
Writing for Humans
The first item on Google's Best Key Practices is "people first content." What exactly is Google talking about? Search engines want to see normal conversations – not information with keywords awkwardly inserted to make search engines happy.
Years ago, search engine result page ranking was based on keywords, so people would write awkward-sounding content with keywords that didn't fit. Now, we need to write as though we were having an in-person conversation about the topic.
This is where voice and tone come in. It is easier for a content strategist to match a client's tone and voice since we shouldn't include keywords just to make search engines happy. For example, try fitting "personal injury attorney near me" in a piece written in the second or third person. It just doesn't work and interrupts the flow of the piece – enough so some people will immediately leave the page.
Obtaining Backlinks for Website Content
Backlinks are other sites that link to your site. They are search engine gold. The more backlinks you have, the more search engines believe your site meets Google's Best Key Practices for E-E-A-T. A higher rank means more Internet visibility, which equates to a higher position on search engine result pages (SERPs).
The big question is how to get backlinks. The best way is to create website content and long-form blog posts that other sites find valuable enough to link to. Your content should be well-written and well-researched. It should also be unique. Even better than unique is one-of-a-kind.
You might find that some information about your services or products doesn't appear anywhere on the Internet. That is the content you want to strive for. It takes a lot of research to create articles, white papers and blog posts about something that doesn't exist yet, but the benefit is being the first to publish it, which could draw backlinks.
How Long Does it Take to Write a Long-Form Blog Post?
The time it takes to write a long-form blog post depends on the subject matter and how much time it takes to research it. For example, we can write 2,000-word posts for personal injury lawyers in two to three hours simply because most of the information we need is already stored in our brains.
Writing a post like this one, which takes considerably more research, could take six to eight hours or more. Capitalize My Title found that it can take an average of 8.3 hours to write a long-form blog post. Others who have researched this topic found that it takes just over four hours to write a long blog post. However, what these studies don't show is whether the writer had in-depth knowledge about a subject or was creating a post about information that required extra research because the information did not exist in one place on the Internet.
Those who want to get it "just right" take even longer. For example, Jon Morrow, a successful blogger, took nearly three hours just to write a headline and spent over 50 hours on one article.
Comprehensiveness, Deepness and Relevance
Every piece of content on your website, even the succinct content on web pages, should have keywords sprinkled throughout the post, comprehensiveness and relevance.
Deep Content Draws People
Each word should be necessary. The content should be "deep." While deep content naturally lends itself to being long, even short content can be deep – it should give the reader, at the least, a complete outline of what they need to know to make the decision to purchase your product or service.
For long-form blog posts, the content should delve into the meat of the subject, including the main focus of the article and its subtopics. Use content marketing in the form of blog posts to give the reader everything he or she needs to know about your service. However, don't include fluff. Make every word count.
Comprehensive Coverage of the Topic
Great content is comprehensive in addition to being deep. It covers topics related to the focus topic. Deep content mentions relevant topics, while comprehensive content delves into related topics that can help a reader decide to hire you or purchase your services. Even short content that is comprehensive can rank well on search engine result pages – as long as it meets Google's Best Key Practices.
Relevant Content
Keyword stuffing is no longer required to rank well. In fact, picking the keyword and then developing content works well. It forces an article to hone in on a single topic and mention that keyword in multiple ways in the piece. Keywords must appear in headers and sprinkled throughout the content – but should never feel stuffed.
A Case Study: The Top Shared Blogs
The top three most-shared blogs, Problogger, Smart Passive Income and Ryan Robinson, have relevant, comprehensive and deep content that covers the main focus point plus subtopics. The first seven blogs on each blog have an average of 1,2,86, 1,307, and 6,229, respectively. The shortest posts on Problogger and Smart Passive Income were 514 and 578 words, respectively. The shortest post on Ryan Robinson was 1,859 words.
Each blogger wrote comprehensive content that was targeted to their audience. Even the shorter blogs completely covered the topic and were relevant to what the reader was looking for.
We recommend website content of at least 500 words and blogs of at least 1,500 words to ensure you can cover everything you need to. For long-form blog posts, there is no maximum word count limit, though long blogs must have plenty of headings, photos and white space.
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[1] Experts include Niel Patel, Hook Agency, Search Engine Journal, FreshGEO and Buffer. Only Rand Fishkin at Moz believes otherwise.
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